More than half of soccer players competing at the UEFA European Championship and Africa Cup of Nations have experienced online abuse, a study published on Saturday by FIFA revealed.
Much of the abuse came from fans of the players’ home nations.
“Homophobic (40 percent) and racist (38 percent) comments provided the majority of the abuse,” said the independent report, published to coincide with the UN International Day for Countering Hate Speech.
Photo: Reuters
Using artificial intelligence to track more than 400,000 posts on social media platforms during the semi-finals and finals of the European Championship in 2020 and last year, and last year’s Africa Cup of Nations “over 50 percent of players received some form of discriminatory abuse.”
FIFA said that with the World Cup in Qatar just five months away, they would work with players union FIFPro to implement a plan on how to protect players from abuse on social media.
This would involve scanning recognized hate speech terms published to identified accounts, and once detected, prevent that comment from being seen by the recipient and their followers.
“Although the offending message remains visible to the person who originally made the comment, its visibility and reach will be significantly reduced,” FIFA said.
England’s Marcus Rashford, Bukayo Saka and Jadon Sancho were all targeted online following their penalty misses in the 2020 Euro final, leading to widespread calls for a clampdown on racist abuse on social media.
One teenager was given a six-week jail sentence for racially abusing Rashford on Twitter after the loss to Italy.
“Our duty is to protect football, and that starts with the players who bring so much joy and happiness to all of us by their exploits on the field of play,” FIFA president Gianni Infantino said. “Unfortunately, there is a trend developing where a percentage of posts on social media channels directed towards players, coaches, match officials and the teams themselves is not acceptable, and this form of discrimination — like any form of discrimination — has no place in football.”
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